Henry A. Wallace – 1888-1965

Wallace was an Iowa agricultural editor and expert, who, switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party, delivered predominantly Republican Iowa to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential elections. Wallace served as FDR’s secretary of agriculture from 1933 to 1940, successfully formulating and administering bold New Deal initiatives in an agricultural economy devastated by the Depression.
Wallace became vice-president during FDR’s third term (1941–1945), but Democratic conservatives (and others) objected to what they regarded as his increasingly leftist orientation. Harry S. Truman replaced him as vice president in FDR’s fourth term. When Truman became president after FDR’s death, he appointed Wallace secretary of commerce, but Wallace left the administration in protest of Truman’s hard-line anti-Soviet stance.